Senior Speaker: Environmental & Natural Resource Economics

A message from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences:

Each year, our graduating students in every major select a student to speak on behalf of their area of study. Because we are a large college, the time allotted to our ceremony does not allow for each speaker to appear on stage. However, these speeches have been recorded for your viewing pleasure. 

At its core, our College supports open and free inquiry and debate about the most weighty and consequential subjects that face us all. Each student was given a minute to speak on whatever topic they think will be meaningful to their peers. Some of the contributions are lighthearted, others are serious, and some may inspire some people and conflict with the values and beliefs of others. But that is the nature of free inquiry and debate: it should challenge us and make us think. We are proud of every one of our graduates, whether or not we agree with the views they express here.

Transcript: 

To the ENRE Class of 2026: We came into this major because we cared, about the environment, about fairness, about how the world actually works. Through Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, we investigated everything from timber markets to solar electricity prices, from pollution to policy, witnessing how deeply our natural world and economic systems are intertwined. That reality has helped create many of the challenges we face today, but also gives us some of the most powerful tools to address them.

ENRE taught us how to think. We dove headfirst into quantitative economics (yes, that meant isoquants, marginal utility, and more graphs than we ever thought possible) while always grounding our work in real-world application.

Along the way, we asked big questions: How do energy subsidies shape fossil fuel use? What incentives help farmers adopt climate-conscious practices? How do environmental policies affect low-income communities differently? ENRE didn’t hand us simple answers, even if sometimes it would have made the problem sets a lot easier, but it gave us the skills and frameworks to keep asking better questions.

So, ENRE Class of 2026, as we graduate, we do so together; ready to help move the world toward something a little smarter, a little fairer, and a little cleaner.